This paper intends to inform the effort of the Sri Lankan government to reform the targeting efficacy of its social protection programs, in particular, Samurdhi, which currently distributes benefits based on self-reported income.
... Exibir mais + The paper develops a proxy means test for Sri Lanka based on the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016 and evaluates its performance for targeting benefits of Samurdhi. The paper considers a range of models and policy parameters that could be applied depending on data availability and country preferences. The results indicate that switching to a proxy means test could considerably improve the targeting performance of Samurdhi and would significantly improve the poverty impact of the program. The analysis finds that the performance of the proposed proxy means test model suffers when the coefficients are estimated from samples smaller than 1,000 households. However, the analysis does not find a similar loss of model performance when the model is estimated from seasonal data, provided the sample size is sufficiently large. The proposed model could be applied to targeting a variety of safety net programs after validating and refining the model by conducting a pilot survey.
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This paper intends to inform the effort of the Sri Lankan government to reform the targeting efficacy of its social protection programs, in particular, Samurdhi, which currently distributes benefits based on self-reported income.
... Exibir mais + The paper develops a proxy means test for Sri Lanka based on the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016 and evaluates its performance for targeting benefits of Samurdhi. The paper considers a range of models and policy parameters that could be applied depending on data availability and country preferences. The results indicate that switching to a proxy means test could considerably improve the targeting performance of Samurdhi and would significantly improve the poverty impact of the program. The analysis finds that the performance of the proposed proxy means test model suffers when the coefficients are estimated from samples smaller than 1,000 households. However, the analysis does not find a similar loss ofmodel performance when the model is estimated from seasonal data, provided the sample size is sufficiently large. The proposed model could be applied to targeting a variety of safety net programs after validating and refining the model by conducting a pilot survey.
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According to the official statistics published by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda, the country registered a decline in poverty from 46 percent in 2010/11 to 39 percent in 2013/14.
... Exibir mais + This declining poverty trend was broadly debated and repeatedly questioned in national and international forums, which provided the primary motivation for this study. Using data from the third and fourth rounds of the Integrated Household Living Conditions Surveys, this paper revisits the national poverty numbers and corroborates the poverty rates published by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda. Underlying the paper’s conclusions is a detailed theoretical and analytical framework for making poverty comparisons over time. Furthermore, the paper shows that after adjusting for spatial and temporal price differences, the poverty rate based on the international poverty line of $1.90 per day per capita shows that there was a reduction in poverty between 2010/11 and 2013/14.
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According to the official statistics published by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda, the country registered a decline in poverty from 46 percent in 2010/11 to 39 percent in 2013/14.
... Exibir mais + This declining poverty trend was broadly debated and repeatedly questioned in national and international forums, which provided the primary motivation for this study. Using data from the third and fourth rounds of the Integrated Household Living Conditions Surveys, this paper revisits the national poverty numbers and corroborates the poverty rates published by the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda. Underlying the paper’s conclusions is a detailed theoretical and analytical framework for making poverty comparisons over time. Furthermore, the paper showsthat after adjusting for spatial and temporal price differences, the poverty rate based on the international poverty line of USD 1.90 per day per capita shows that there was a reduction in poverty between 2010/11 and 2013/14.
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In June 2015, about 53,000 people were affected by unusually severe floods in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana. The real impact of such a disaster is a product of exposure ("Who was affected?")
... Exibir mais + , vulnerability ("How much did the affected households lose?"), and socioeconomic resilience ("What was their ability to cope and recover?"). This study explores these three dimensions to assess whether poor people were disproportionally affected by the 2015 floods. It reaches four main conclusions. (1) In the studied area, there is no difference in annual expenditures between the households who were affected and those who were not affected by the flood. (2) Poorer households lost less than their richer neighbors in absolute terms, but more when compared with their annual expenditure level, and poorer households are over-represented among the most severely affected households. (3) More than 30 percent of the affected households report not having recovered two years after the shock, and the ability of households to recover was driven by the magnitude of their losses, sources of income, and access to coping mechanisms, but not by their poverty, as measured by the annual expenditure level. (4) There is a measurable effect of the flood on behaviors, under-mining savings and investment in enterprises. The study concludes with two policy implications. First, flood management could be considered as a component of the poverty-reduction strategy in the city. Second, building resilience is not only about increasing income. It also requires providing the population with coping and recovery mechanisms such as financial instruments. A flood management program needs to be designed to target low-resilience households, such as those with little access to coping and recovery mechanisms, even those who are not living in poverty before the shock.
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In June 2015, about 53,000 people were affected by unusually severe floods in the Greater Accra Metropolitan Area, Ghana. The real impact of such a disaster is a product of exposure (Who was affected?)
... Exibir mais + , vulnerability (How much did the affected households lose?), and socioeconomic resilience (What was their ability to cope and recover?). This study explores these three dimensions to assess whether poor people were disproportionally affected by the 2015 floods. It reaches four main conclusions. (1) In the studied area, there is no difference in annual expenditures between the households who were affected and those who were not affected by the flood. (2) Poorer households lost less than their richer neighbors in absolute terms, but more when compared with their annual expenditure level, and poorer households are over-represented among the most severely affected households. (3) More than 30 percent of the affected households report not having recovered two years after the shock, and the ability of households to recover was driven by the magnitude of their losses, sources of income, and access to coping mechanisms, but not by their poverty, as measured by the annual expenditure level. (4) There is a measurable effect of the flood on behaviors, under-mining savings and investment in enterprises. The study concludes with two policy implications. First, flood management could be
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This paper intends to inform the effort of the Sri Lankan government to reform the targeting efficacy of its social protection programs, in particular, Samurdhi, which currently distributes benefits based on self-reported income.
... Exibir mais + We develop a Proxy Means Test (PMT) for Sri Lanka based on the Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016 and evaluate its performance for targeting benefits of Samurdhi. The paper considers a range of models and policy parameters that could be applied depending on data availability and country preferences. The results indicate that switching to a PMT could considerably improve the targeting performance of Samurdhi and would significantly improve the poverty impact of the program. We find that the performance of the proposed PMT model suffers when the coefficients are estimated from samples smaller than 1,000 households. However, we do not find a similar loss of model performance when the model is estimated from seasonal data, provided the sample size is sufficiently large. The model we propose could be applied to the targeting of a variety of safety net programs after validating and refining our model by conducting a pilot survey.
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This summary report presents the findings of the Bangladesh WASH Poverty Diagnostic (BWPD) study led by the World Bank's Water and Poverty Global Practices.
... Exibir mais + Though very few Bangladeshis now fetch water from rivers or defecate in fields, the vast majority still live in environments plagued by inadequate water supply, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) that hinder the country's overall development. BWPD is a data-driven exercise with an objective to highlight the key inadequacies in WASH service delivery and guide country and sector priorities for maximum impact during the Sustainable Development Goal era. BWPD gives a snapshot of the quality and inequality of WASH access by generating statistics from numerous datasets. BWPD also attempts to show the implications of these numbers on human development and poverty reduction. A large portion of the work is dedicated to presenting stylized facts on the synergies between different dimensions of WASH and human development outcomes such as in health, nutrition, and education. Further, the generated numbers should help government and other stakeholders identify gaps in service delivery and ask questions on why these gaps exist. The final portion of this study begins a discussion on the institutional challenges that could be inhibiting high-quality service delivery. The report concludes by offering recommendations for moving Bangladesh's WASH sector forward.
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Telephone surveys enable us to collect data in a cost-effective and timely manner, but may not be conducive for collecting detailed consumption or income data for measuring poverty due to the required length of the interview and complexity of the questions.
... Exibir mais + Combining telephone surveys with a survey-to-survey imputation technique may be a solution, as this technique can produce reliable poverty estimates from only 10 to 20 simple questions. However, this approach may lead to biased results if the interview mode, that is, face-to-face versus telephone interviews, affects how households respond to questions. By conducting the first survey experiment to examine potential differences in poverty estimates between interview modes, this study finds that the reporting patterns changed very little between the two interview modes, and the bias in poverty estimates due to interview mode is statistically insignificant. These findings suggest that poverty monitoring via telephone surveys is promising, but additional experiments in other country contexts are encouraged.
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The objectives of the Bangladesh Programmatic Poverty Analysis (BPPA), in the context of the Systematic Country Diagnostic (SCD) and Country Partnership Framework (CPF) cycle, are the following: (i) to support the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) in the production of higher quality and more timely household survey data; (ii) to build knowledge and evidence on extreme poverty and shared prosperity; (iii) to inform the design and implementation of selected projects included in the CPF; and (iv) to fill selected knowledge gaps identified in the SCD.
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This paper describes the design of a multi-stage stratified sample for the Bangladesh Household Income and Expenditure Survey 2016/17. This survey instrument will be used by the Government of Bangladesh to estimate reliable poverty and welfare statistics at three different levels: (i) annual estimates at the district level, (ii) quarterly estimates at the national level, and (iii) annual estimates at the division level for urban and rural areas.
... Exibir mais + The sample for this survey was designed to achieve these three objectives. The paper explains how the three objectives are prioritized and how inconsistencies in achieving more than one objective can be reconciled. Further, the paper modifies the standard formulas to estimate the optimal sample size and the allocation of the sample across strata by explicitly taking into consideration the effect of clustering in the sample.
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This paper describes the design of a multi-stage stratified sample for the Bangladesh household income and expenditure survey 2016-17. This survey instrument will be used by the Government of Bangladesh to estimate reliable poverty and welfare statistics at three different levels: (i) annual estimates at the district level, (ii) quarterly estimates at the national level, and (iii) annual estimates at the division level for urban and rural areas.
... Exibir mais + The sample for this survey was designed to achieve these three objectives. The paper explains how the three objectives are prioritized and how inconsistencies in achieving more than one objective can be reconciled. Further, the paper modifies the standard formulas to estimate the optimal sample size and the allocation of the sample across strata by explicitly taking into consideration the effect of clustering in the sample.
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On October 15, 2015, World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim announced the World Bank Group’s commitment to support the 78 poorest countries to implement a multi-topic household survey every three years between 2016 and 2030, for monitoring progress toward ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity.
... Exibir mais + This paper estimates the resource requirements to achieve the objectives of implementing 390 surveys across 78 International Development Association countries from 2016 to 2030, and providing direct technical assistance to the national statistical offices on all facets of survey design, implementation, and dissemination toward timely production of quality household survey data. The approach to the costing exercise is unique, as it makes use of detailed data on actual survey implementation and technical assistance costs from a group of countries, unlike previous attempts at costing household survey data gaps. The required total budget, in accordance with the survey design features recommended by the World Bank Household Survey Strategy, is estimated at US$945 million for the period of 2016-2030. Of this, US$692 million is projected to cover the survey implementation costs across 78 countries, and US$253 million is projected to cover the costs of direct technical assistance to be provided to the national statistical offices.
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This update introduces Bangladesh’s new poverty numbers at 1.90 dollars per capita per day in 2011 purchasing power parity (PPP) prices, followed by an account of recent economic development, the outlook, risks, and policy responses.
... Exibir mais + The revised poverty rates are significantly lower, but follow the same downward historical trend seen when using the 2005 international extreme poverty line. Bangladesh can bring its extreme poverty rate down to nearly zero by 2030 either by accelerating gross domestic product (GDP) growth to 9 percent per year, or by maintaining its recent growth rate while taking steps to make growth more inclusive. Bangladesh is on track to sustaining its recent 6 plus percent growth in the near and medium-term, driven by exports and strong domestic demand. Security, financial and trade shocks are the main risks. The policy challenges are to boost productivity and private investment by reforming business regulations, addressing infrastructure and energy deficits, and increasing the efficiency of financial intermediation. A special policy focus in this report is on introducing carbon taxation.
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This update introduces Bangladesh's new poverty numbers at $1.90 per capita per day in 2011 purchasing power parity (PPP) prices, followed by an account of recent economic development, the outlook, risks, and policy responses.
... Exibir mais + The revised poverty rates are significantly lower, but follow the same downward historical trend seen when using the 2005 international extreme poverty line. Bangladesh can bring its extreme poverty rate down to nearly zero by 2030 either by accelerating GDP growth to 9 percent per year, or by maintaining its recent growth rate while taking steps to make growth more inclusive. Bangladesh is on track to sustaining its recent 6 plus percent growth in the near and medium-term, driven by exports and strong domestic demand. Security, financial and trade shocks are the main risks. The policy challenges are to boost productivity and private investment by reforming business regulations, addressing infrastructure and energy deficits and increasing the efficiency of financial intermediation. A special policy focus in this report is on introducing carbon taxation.
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This paper is the first to systematically test the robustness of shared prosperity estimates to different methodological choices using a sample of countries from all regions in the world.
... Exibir mais + The tests that are conducted include grouped versus microdata, nominal welfare aggregate versus adjustment for spatial price variation, and different treatment of income with negative and zero values. The empirical results reveal an only minimal impact of the proposed tests on shared prosperity estimates. Nevertheless, there are important caveats. First, spatial adjustment can change the ranking of households, affecting the distribution of the population in the bottom 40 percent. Second, the negligible impact of spatial deflation holds only if price adjustments are carried out consistently over time. Finally, the treatment of negative and zero income numbers can potentially lead to substantial differences in shared prosperity, depending on the magnitude of negative income and the share of households with negative and zero numbers across years.
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This paper is the first to systematically test the robustness of shared prosperity estimates to different methodological choices using a sample of countries from all regions in the world.
... Exibir mais + The tests that are conducted include grouped versus micro data, nominal welfare aggregate versus adjustment for spatial price variation, and different treatment of income with negative and zero values. The empirical results reveal an only minimal impact of the proposed tests on shared prosperity estimates. Nevertheless, there are important caveats. First, spatial adjustment can change the ranking of households, affecting the distribution of the population in the bottom 40 percent. Second, the negligible impact of spatial deflation holds only if price adjustments are carried out consistently over time. Finally, the treatment of negative and zero income numbers can potentially lead to substantial differences in shared prosperity, depending on the magnitude of negative income and the share of households with negative and zero numbers across years.
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The 2014 release of a new set of purchasing power parity conversion factors (PPPs) for 2011 has prompted a revision of the international poverty line.
... Exibir mais + In order to preserve the integrity of the goalposts for international targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the World Bank’s twin goals, the new poverty line was chosen so as to preserve the definition and real purchasing power of the earlier $1.25 line (in 2005 PPPs) in poor countries. Using the new 2011 PPPs, the new line equals $1.90 per person per day. The higher value of the line in US dollars reflects the fact that the new PPPs yield a relatively lower purchasing power of that currency vis-à-vis those of most poor countries. Because the line was designed to preserve real purchasing power in poor countries, the revisions lead to relatively small changes in global poverty incidence: from 14.5 percent in the old method to 14.1 percent in the new method for 2011. In 2012, the new reference year for the global count, we find 12.7 percent of the world’s population, or 897 million people, are living in extreme poverty. There are changes in the regional composition of poverty, but they are also relatively small. This paper documents the detailed methodological decisions taken in the process of updating both the poverty line and the consumption and income distributions at the country level, including issues of inter-temporal and spatial price adjustments. It also describes various caveats, limitations, perils and pitfalls of the approach taken.
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The 2014 release of a new set of purchasing power parity conversion factors (PPPs) for 2011 has prompted a revision of the international poverty line.
... Exibir mais + In order to preserve the integrity of the goalposts for international targets such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the World Bank's twin goals, the new poverty line was chosen so as to preserve the definition and real purchasing power of the earlier $1.25 line (in 2005 PPPs) in poor countries. Using the new 2011 PPPs, the new line equals $1.90 per person per day. The higher value of the line in US dollars reflects the fact that the new PPPs yield a relatively lower purchasing power of that currency vis-å-vis those of most poor countries. Because the line was designed to preserve real purchasing power in poor countries, the revisions lead to relatively small changes in global poverty incidence: from 14.5 percent in the old method to 14.1 percent in the new method for 2011. In 2012, the new reference year for the global count, we find 12.7 percent of the world's population, or 897 million people, are living in extreme poverty. There are changes in the regional composition of poverty, but they are also relatively small. This paper documents the detailed methodological decisions taken in the process of updating both the poverty line and the consumption and income distributions at the country level, including issues of inter-temporal and spatial price adjustments. It also describes various caveats, limitations, perils and pitfalls of the approach taken.
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